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all i can think of is bill ayers writing the text books for our country. if his goal was to dummy us down…..its working. what a shame. can’t you see her teacher giving her an A in that class so as not to effect (or is that affect? lol) her self-esteem?

I used to give a employment test to prospective hires. One of the questions was “If it takes 3 men 5 hours to complete a project, how many hours would it take 9 men”. Most didn’t get the answer correct, as it was a low skilled job, but it was a reasonably good predictor if someone had the correct answer that they would be a reliable, clear thinking employee.
Then one day someone answered the question not with the number of hours, but with a statement “9 men might be an inefficient use of manpower to get the project done if it could be done with 3 men, since some of them will be goofing off”.
I hired him on the spot and he worked out pretty well, even though he couldn’t do the math.

I used to give a employment test to prospective hires. One of the questions was “If it takes 3 men 5 hours to complete a project, how many hours would it take 9 men”. Most didn’t get the answer correct, as it was a low skilled job, but it was a reasonably good predictor if someone had the correct answer that they would be a reliable, clear thinking employee.
Then one day someone answered the question not with the number of hours, but with a statement “9 men might be an inefficient use of manpower to get the project done if it could be done with 3 men, since some of them will be goofing off”.
I hired him on the spot and he worked out pretty well, even though he couldn’t do the math.

moo on March 20, 2012 at 9:39 AM

Without knowing whether said project could be divided into 9 equal parts, the intuitive answer of 1 hour 40 minutes could easily be wrong. For example, having 9 people rebuilding 1 engine takes almost as long as 3 people rebuilding 1 engine.

She either knows what she’s supposed to do but does it wrong or she doesn’t know what to do.

yongoro on March 20, 2012 at 12:38 AM

The answer is that she knows she’s supposed to find the amount of time it takes to travel 80 miles. The fact that she provided a guess using a measure of time is all the evidence that one needs to know that she clearly KNEW what she was supposed to do.

She didn’t know how to do it.

If she knew what to do to solve the problem she would have done it. There is a difference between knowing what the problem is and knowing how to solve it.

Here, she tries to set up a proportion to solve the problem

The problem can most certainly be solved using a proportion.

80 miles / 1 hours = 80 miles / x hours

80 miles * x hours = 80 miles hours

x = 80 miles hours / 80 miles

x = 80 miles hours / 80 miles

x = 1 hours

The proportion she tries to set up is the relationship between the time it takes her to run one mile and the time it takes a car to go 80 miles (@80mph).

since she has to do it in her head, makes a rough guess (which is almost spot on).

1. Anyone that knows how to do this problem can do this in their head.

2. Her guess is not “almost spot on” at all. Frankly, it’s sad that a math teacher would even make such a statement.

Considering she doing it the “wrong” way, it’s quite a surprise that she was anywhere close to the correct answer.
My statement reflected my surprise, not that I was awarding her any points for it.

Clearly, to me, she has some idea of how to do that.

Exactly how much credit are you giving students for having some shred of a clue of how to do something?

As far as grades, none. This exercise is for me to determine why they got the wrong answer so I can figure out how to address their instruction.

Your attempt to claim that she somehow knew how to do it if only she knew what she was being asked is depressing. It makes me think that we have math teachers out there that don’t know how to realistically assess what a student knows and what they don’t.

for you, apparently, there is only know or doesn’t know. For me, there is a range of knowledge, what the student knows and what needs to be done to get her to where I want her to be. Rest assured. She would not get credit until she could demonstrate both her knowledge AND understanding of the material.

First off, I’m solidly with those who have pointed out that the real idiot in this video is Travis. Never should have posted a video making his wife look foolish.

So it falls to us to do the husband’s job for idiot Travis, and stick up for his wife.

Yes, she is ignorant of the meaning of MPH. But ignorance is not stupidity, and she does do three commendable things — lessons any of my engineering students should take to heart:

1) She uses a calibrated benchmark (her running pace) to try to extrapolate to the car’s pace

2) She recognizes that she has insufficient data to complete the extrapolation, and discards that line of thinking. (Too many otherwise-capable engineering students get bogged down in a doomed problem-solving approach and can’t see that they should discard it and start over.)

3) She thinks about how a speedometer works (measuring how quickly the axles rotate), and recognizes that different-diameter wheels will travel different distances despite having the same speedometer reading. This is actually a fairly sophisticated approach to measurements.

Yes, she overemphasizes the measurement error from the wheel diameter, and yes, she makes some pretty coarse approximations. I’ve seen far worse on exams. In fact, I’d probably give Chelsea 65-75% credit on this problem.

Without knowing whether said project could be divided into 9 equal parts, the intuitive answer of 1 hour 40 minutes could easily be wrong. For example, having 9 people rebuilding 1 engine takes almost as long as 3 people rebuilding 1 engine.

Steve Eggleston on March 20, 2012 at 10:00 AM

Hopefully, this is the type of answer that moo always wanted to see. If moo insisted that the answer is 1 hour and 40 minutes then I’ll be even more depressed.

For example, what if the job required a considerable amount of drying or curing that definitely took longer than 1 hour and 40 minutes?

The age old projection management question is this: If one woman can have a baby in 9 months, then how many months would it take 9 women to have a baby?

In other words, she doesn’t know what to do to solve the problem. Your original statement was, “I think she really doesn’t understand the question”.

So, you implied that she would have known how to solve the problem if she had understood the question.

I’m telling you that she understood the question just fine. I’m telling you that she doesn’t know how to solve the problem.

There is a difference between knowing what the problem is and knowing how to solve it.

Only an idiot doesn’t know that there’s a difference between what the problem is and knowing how to solve it.

I’m definitively telling you that she repeatedly confirms that she knew what the problem is and that she didn’t know how to solve it.

The proportion she tries to set up is the relationship between the time it takes her to run one mile and the time it takes a car to go 80 miles (@80mph).

It can’t be solved using that single proportion. The time it takes her to run one mile is useless information.

Considering she doing it the “wrong” way, it’s quite a surprise that she was anywhere close to the correct answer.

I can’t agree. First, I don’t think she was anywhere close to the correct answer. The question probably came up because they saw a sign that indicated that they were 80 miles from a certain city. He probably had told her that they would have lunch in that city, and she probably knew that they had planned to eat lunch in about an hour. Regardless, she probably had some sense of their driving schedule more than she performed any estimate of the math involved.

My statement reflected my surprise, not that I was awarding her any points for it.

Are you surprised when you hear that someone picked 6 lottery numbers correctly? Sometimes answers pulled out of butts can be close or even exact. This doesn’t mean that the person had some sense of what the lottery numbers were going to be.

As far as grades, none.

Whew.

This exercise is for me to determine why they got the wrong answer so I can figure out how to address their instruction.

I’ll tell you exactly why SHE didn’t get the right answer – because she’s clueless. You should address your instruction by forcing her to sit through a year of remedial math class.

And your wasting your time if you keep believing that she merely “doesn’t understand the question”.

For me, there is a range of knowledge, what the student knows and what needs to be done to get her to where I want her to be.

Yes, and she clearly falls outside the range.

And her problem clearly isn’t that she merely “doesn’t understand the question” so admit that you were wrong about this and move on.

She would not get credit until she could demonstrate both her knowledge AND understanding of the material.

It seems as if you now know that she understood the question and that your long answers are simply a way for you to avoid admitting it.

She deserves a plain o’l F for this problem. She got the answer wrong. Doesn’t matter how many creative ways she tries to get to the answer. They all come up short.

I give her points for trying but she has a major problem with the grammar of language and mathematics here. She really hasn’t been asked to calculate a problem. Two variables were all that were presented. And they were presented for her in a ratio.

^^ Thought of another one: I all too often see the phrase “should of,” instead of the necessary use of a verb in “should have.” The English language is only a step and a half above random grunting at that point…

Gingotts on March 19, 2012 at 9:49 PM

I would give them a pass on this one. What they mean is “should’ve” for “should have,” but instead of recognizing it as a contraction, they substitute the two words “should of” when writing it out. Annoying, maybe, but a fairly innocent mistake.

I don’t think the issue has anything to do with math or problem solving skills. The problem seems to be a lack of listening and comprehension skills. The answer is given in the question! I think ‘inability to communicate’ might have been a problem within their marriage. This is why there’s that ‘repeat back what I’ve just said’ exercise.

Unless all you picky shmoes are referring to comments you’ve seen in writing, you are unlikely to have the data necessary to know whether you have overheard someone saying “should of” instead of “should have”, because you could quite possibly have overheard the person saying “should’ve”, a contraction that Hot Air’s spellcheck insists is incorrect, but that everyone but you knows is just fine.

So the error may well lie in your hearing and comprehension skills rather than in the speech and grammar skills of the person whose speech you are so smugly judging.

Unless all you picky shmoes are referring to comments you’ve seen in writing, you are unlikely to have the data necessary to know whether you have overheard someone saying “should of” instead of “should have”,

“It depends on how much I can lift. If I’m tired and its been a bad day at the gym then I can probably only lift the feathers. But if I’m having an awesome day then I can probably lift the metal 1/2 way up.”

So in other words you would give good credit to a student that failed to even grasp the basic mathematical elements in the problem simply because in her flailing she hit upon something that you could make intelligible through a lot of stretching?

While at the same time expelling a student who knew how to do the work but had an attitude problem that could (and should) be addressed separately from his grade on the test?

The gal flunks high school math….and the guy flunks “how to stay married” 101 (with extra demerits for posting this on YouTube).

Two losers on the road to nowhere!!!

(If they don’t kill each other: the guy will be drafted for the next war and sent overseas…where he’ll be fragged by his own men. She will go sightseeing in Hawaii and go wading in a volcanic lava pit. They’ll both be nominated posthumously for Darwin awards, with extra oak leaf clusters for NOT degrading the gene pool by having children)

So in other words you would give good credit to a student that failed to even grasp the basic mathematical elements in the problem simply because in her flailing she hit upon something that you could make intelligible through a lot of stretching?

While at the same time expelling a student who knew how to do the work but had an attitude problem that could (and should) be addressed separately from his grade on the test?

Is it any wonder we have problems in our education system?

Sqrl on March 20, 2012 at 5:32 PM

These questions are perfectly articulated – much better than my response to him.

Are you surprised when you hear that someone picked 6 lottery numbers correctly? Sometimes answers pulled out of butts can be close or even exact. This doesn’t mean that the person had some sense of what the lottery numbers were going to be.

Really? We’re not talking about picking lottery numbers. She played around with a few ideas. Dismissed some, and then, after we watched her head merrily down the wrong path, she came up with an answer within 3 1/3% of the actual answer. 58 minutes doesn’t seem an answer one pulls out of ones butt (as you put it). She finally settles on an answer she feels comfortable with. I have students that are more than happy to tell me about houses that are 4 ft tall and moms that are younger than their children, with absolutely no inkling that they may be in error.

I’m not saying I’d give her any credit at all, but I am a little interested in knowing her thought process that led her to her answer. As a teacher, when I understand what the student was thinking, then I can begin to correct the errors that are being made.

An 18lb turkey needs to be roasted at 280°F for 4 hours. A birthday cake needs to be baked at 350°F for 28 minutes. What is the total temperature that Jim gets if he adds up every minute he bakes everything at?

I’m not surprised that you’re unable to understand the point I was making with the lottery number example.

She played around with a few ideas. Dismissed some, and then, after we watched her head merrily down the wrong path, she came up with an answer within 3 1/3% of the actual answer. 58 minutes doesn’t seem an answer one pulls out of ones butt (as you put it).

No, Sqrl put it best. You’re giving “good credit to a student that failed to even grasp the basic mathematical elements in the problem simply because in her flailing she hit upon something that you could make intelligible through a lot of stretching?”

she came up with an answer within 3 1/3% of the actual answer.

If you think that 58 is within 3 1/3% of 80 then I have most certainly won this debate. Good grief.

What on earth are you doing teaching ANYONE math?

but I am a little interested in knowing her thought process that led her to her answer. As a teacher, when I understand what the student was thinking, then I can begin to correct the errors that are being made.

Well, YOU get a failing grade here because you attempted to claim that she might have been capable of solving the problem is she understood the problem.

That’s wrong. She understood the problem. She didn’t know how to solve it.

I was married to a blonde just like her. You have NO IDEA how many stunned looks I had during the sixteen yrs I was with her. I mean, totally clueless! Not unintelligent, just totally clueless.

I watched her one time drive over an entire 4×8 piece of plywood with 2×4′s nailed into it, and looked at me in surprise when I mentioned she did it. She didn’t know, she didn’t care. I called her car “the magic box” because all she wanted was that it turned over when she put in the key. She didn’t worry about tire pressure, oil or even gas.

When we were dating, she had a Taurus. She actually asked me what that light was that kept coming on as she turned. It was the fuel pump low gas warning light. She drove her car nearly empty all the time. It took years for me to get her to understand that a full tank and running it to the halfway point was the same as a half tank and running it until…well the cute little light went on when you turned.

One time she called me saying her car had gone off the road. When I got there, her Corolla was in a water filled ditch, partially submerged, with the headlights still on and illuminating the fish swimming by. I swear to God it’s the truth! Her explanation? She had passed the place she wanted to turn into and decided to do a turn in the middle of the road. She just didn’t anticipate going over the soft shoulder so far that her car just slid in. Now it had been raining every day for a week. You had to be an idiot or a blonde not to know the shoulders were muddy.

And yes, before you say “Well you married her!” I accept full responsibility. She was beautiful and I was suffering from the Robin Williams rule, as all men do at one point or another.

I picked up my 6 year old from school today and asked her the same question only I used 10 mph, at first she said 10 hours, then I asked is she was sure and she paused and then gave the correct answer.

But the dude is still a pr!ck. If this happened to one of my girls, the boyfriend or husband would be eating a knuckle sandwich.

But it’s most certainly stupid to be ignorant of certain things. It’s stupid to be ignorant of the fact that 80 mph means that one would travel 80 miles in one hour.

Agreed. It’s embarrassing that she doesn’t know what mph means. As I explained in my lead paragraph, this poor girl has been dragged into the internet to be an object of ridicule — dragged into it by her husband, of all people — and I’m just trying to point out the redeemable parts of her mistake.

She recognizes that she has insufficient data to complete the extrapolation, and discards that line of thinking.

1. Actually, she doesn’t have insufficient date. It’s strange that you would imply that she does.

2. It’s strange for you to consider that an extrapolation.

She knows that she can run a mile in 6 minutes, or ten miles in one hour. If she could relate her speed to the car’s average speed, she could extrapolate to estimate the range of the car. I don’t think there’s anything strange in what I wrote.

(And yes, this is a ridiculous thought exercise, given that she has all the data she needs to solve the problem. I’m just trying to show that, once you accept the ridiculous premise that ‘mph’ means nothing, how one would go about trying to estimate range.)

3) She thinks about how a speedometer works (measuring how quickly the axles rotate), and recognizes that different-diameter wheels will travel different distances …

This isn’t true at all – as we all know.

Different-diamater wheels will travel the SAME distances. They will both travel 80 miles.

A wheel with diameter D feet will move forward (pi*D) feet with every revolution of the axle. A wheel with diameter 2*D feet will move forward 2*pi*D feet with every revolution.

My point is that a speedometer reading “80 mph” isn’t actually measuring speed — it’s measuring axle turns, which are an open-loop estimation of speed. Calibrated, yes, but still… Travis exhibits a classic problem I encounter in class all the time — the assumption that whatever answer pops out of the computer is correct.

In fact, I’d probably give Chelsea 65-75% credit on this problem.

Good grief.

This is exactly why we have people like Chelsea – because too many teachers like you will give her a passing grade for this.

Let’s all take a deep breath before accusing one another of ruinous teaching methods that are driving our great nation into the ditch (at 80 mph, no less). The context (which I admit I did not explain very well) was for how to estimate speed when you don’t have access to a little needle giving you ‘mph’.

So in other words you would give good credit to a student that failed to even grasp the basic mathematical elements in the problem simply because in her flailing she hit upon something that you could make intelligible through a lot of stretching?

First off, as I noted to ‘blink’, I’m trying to restore some degree of dignity to this poor girl who was betrayed by her husband into the unkind hands of the internet. So stretching was going to be a necessary part of my response.

Yes, she should know what ‘miles per hour’ means — and no, no student is really going to pass my Dynamics class without being able to work with basic units. But the rest of her so-called flailing indicated some actual thought process. I can work with someone like that — I can teach them what the units mean, and then I can show them how to hone their thought process to make actual engineering judgements.

Put another way: as an educator, isn’t it my job make intelligible the ignorant flailings of my students — to help them understand how to solve problems, and to give them the tools to do so?

Partial credit is a useful motivating tool — rather than just mark it all wrong and make them figure it out, I can help students see where they were on the right track. (Aside: I’m generous with partial credit because I’m notorious for creating seemingly-innocuous problems that are actually tricky to solve.)

While at the same time expelling a student who knew how to do the work but had an attitude problem that could (and should) be addressed separately from his grade on the test?

PS – I don’t at all disagree that this guy is a complete ass for what he did. I am simply taken aback by the notion that attitude problems in your classroom mean someone is unworthy of an education.

Sarcasm, dude, sarcasm. (Actually, hyperbole.) I was just circling back to my original point — his gross dereliction of duty was far worse than her gross ignorance.

Is it any wonder we have problems in our education system?

I stand by my methods and especially my results — the students I’ve placed in excellent engineering jobs around the world. I’m damn proud of them.

She knows that she can run a mile in 6 minutes, or ten miles in one hour. If she could relate her speed to the car’s average speed, she could extrapolate to estimate the range of the car. I don’t think there’s anything strange in what I wrote.

Darth Hippie on March 21, 2012 at 2:08 AM

One doesn’t extrapolate her running speed to figure out how long it takes the car to go 80 miles.

One would extrapolate to figure out how long it would take HER to go 80 miles – NOT the car.

I’m just trying to show that, once you accept the ridiculous premise that ‘mph’ means nothing, how one would go about trying to estimate range.

She didn’t need to estimate range. She needed to figure out the time of travel for a car to go a certain distance.

My point is that a speedometer reading “80 mph” isn’t actually measuring speed — it’s measuring axle turns, which are an open-loop estimation of speed. Calibrated, yes, but still… Travis exhibits a classic problem I encounter in class all the time — the assumption that whatever answer pops out of the computer is correct.

isn’t it my job make intelligible the ignorant flailings of my students — to help them understand how to solve problems, and to give them the tools to do so?

You should make them push themselves to your standard rather than sinking down to theirs.

Look, nobody appreciated partial credit more than I. I often made calculation errors.

However, I never expected credit unless I demonstrated an actual knowledge of how to solve the problem. Chelsea exhibited no knowledge of how to solve the problem. She merely raised issues associated with the problem.

No partial credit for her. Period.

Partial credit is a useful motivating tool — rather than just mark it all wrong and make them figure it out, I can help students see where they were on the right track.

She was never on the right track. This is what worries me about both your teaching methodology and your own knowledge.

the students I’ve placed in excellent engineering jobs around the world.

Please don’t tell me that you’re an engineer. And if you’re not an engineer then tell me what institution has non-engineers teaching Dynamics to engineers?